Day 131

Today was a good day.  I liked it and would gladly have another like it.


This morning in Finance we started talking more about annuities.  This time about instances where the payments and interest compoundings occurred at different rates.  This should be interesting.  Things are starting to get pretty overlapped between finance and life contingencies.  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  I guess I'll find out soon enough.  We're also talking about annuities in life contingencies.  The main differences is that in finance we know how long the annuity last.  In life contingencies, the annuity is contingent upon the life or death of the annuitant.  But since you never know when someone will die.... it makes things tricky.


After class I taught.  Dr. Begum dropped in for a surprise visit to watch me teach.  Well, not completely a surprise.  Yesterday in class she said she might stop in.  And she did.  Today wasn't the most exciting lecture.  Basically we just talked about different ways of determining how to find a "random sample."  I also gave out the extra credit assignment.  I'm having them (if they want extra credit) write a short paper on a mathematician and include things about what that person added to mathematics and also what was going on historically in that person's life.  I'm guessing at least 2/3 of the class will do it.  I don't think many of them were happy with their grade.  This will allow them to earn up to an extra 6% on their test, which is pretty significant.


Then it was lunch time.  I broke another container.  :(  I need to be more careful with them.  After lunch I went for a run.  I think I ended up going about 4 miles.  I really hope I can survive the race.


Let's see.  When I got back I took a shower.  It was lovely.  After the aforementioned shower, I did a little bit of writing.  Just to get some ideas out of my head and onto paper.  It was helpful.  Then I cleaned the kitchen up.  I still haven't tackled my room... that will be tomorrow after class.  Timbo came over to get the notes from life contingencies, since he was absent.  So I explained what we did in class and such.  Then we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for his belated birthday.  It was fun.  We just ate amazing food and talked about school, home, or just whatever.  He was amazed that I have never golfed before.


When I got back I thought about studying, then didn't.  Grandpa called me.  I caught him up on school and everything.  He was very glad to hear that not all education had gotten watered down since he finished school.  I assured him that my program certainly was not watered down at all.  I told him a little bit more about what I'm studying, but his guess was pretty accurate already in that it's basically using collected data to predict the probability of survival and using those numbers to price insurance policies.


Yup.  And now it's bed time.  Night!